Brief synopsis of the readings: Our readings are unusual: during the season of Easter many of our first readings will come from the Acts of the Apostles which took place after Jesus’ Resurrection. The Gospels, however, took place before. That means we, essentially, read them in reverse order. Our first reading describes the actions in the earliest days of the community. They were “of one heart and mind.” They shared all they had in common and bore witness to the Resurrection. None of them needed anything as the wealthy sold their houses and property and gave the proceeds to the community. These proceeds were distributed according to need. John’s Gospel recounts my namesake, Thomas. On a day when the disciples gathered but Thomas was not among them, Jesus appeared, blessed them, and told them they had the power to forgive sins. Jesus then disappeared. Later the disciples saw Thomas who refused to believe them, telling them that he won’t believe unless he can place his hands in Jesus’ wounds. The disciples gathered a week later with Thomas present. Jesus appeared again and offered his wounds to Thomas. Overwhelmed, Thomas replied: “My Lord and my God!” Jesus told those gathered that those who believed without seeing are blessed.

So what now? Jesus is really alive. OK, nobody had a plan for this, and as much as Jesus may have foretold everyone that this was going to happen nobody really understood what he was talking about. Oh yes, and he never told anyone what they should do. And frankly, Jesus appeared and disappeared mysteriously and without warning so it was hard to get much out of him.

And yet these are important days. The end of the Gospels implied that Jesus would leave them and return soon; the idea of founding a church or making long range plans probably never occurred to them. But two things seemed to have mattered: they needed to stick together and they needed to tell everyone about Jesus. Though it’s not explicitly in this reading they also recognized that they needed to celebrate Eucharist: “Do this in memory of me.”

Even though they didn’t realize it they were setting the first few steps of the journey that we trod today. Unfortunately I think when our eyes look upon these readings we take away the wrong message or at least the wrong emphasis. The opening line that the community of believers “was of one heart and mind” seems to draw us in more than it should. It doesn’t take much more reading in this book to see that conflicts inevitably happen and God knows we Christians are not of one heart and one mind today. Today we benefit from these conflicts because much of St. Paul’s writings sort out different beliefs and spell out what we believe. Nevertheless throughout our history different groups have tried to recreate this image of “one heart and mind.” They erroneously valued purity over community. Countless small communities have gathered with the intent of recreating this early community, calling themselves “New Jerusalem” or other names. They all failed. Sometimes the inevitable conflicts took their toll and they disbanded. Unfortunately more often the group has come under the leadership of one person who demands conformity and we call them cults. We must never forget that the Ku Klux Klan claimed to follow Jesus or that the 75 people who died in 1993 in Waco, Texas fell under the influence of David Koresh who convinced his followers that he spoke for God.

But our first disciples did decide to stay together even when they disagreed with each other. They insisted they look beyond this and care for each other and as time went on this became more and more important. Two thousand years later we still await Jesus’ return and in our Gospel we read about what to do with someone who just can’t believe the Resurrection. We read about Thomas with some sympathy but also some belief that he was somehow “less than” the others. But when he announced what it would take for him to believe, the other disciples didn’t scold him; as a matter of fact they did nothing more than continue to make him welcome and let Jesus take care of the rest. There was no discussion of “if you don’t believe this you can’t stay.” They recognized that the journey (or return) to faith isn’t always quick or easy and we’re not in charge of policing who can belong.

We’ll be reading more about this as this season goes on but as this community began to spread the word of Jesus’ victory over death they also kept an eye on the needs of the community. “Distributing to each according to need” recognizes that we come with different contributions and different needs. We tend to think of Jesus and his followers as being fairly poor, but we also know that Joseph of Arimathea, who purchased Jesus’ burial place, was wealthy. Even our earliest days showed a disparity of wealth.

And given that they didn’t think they needed to make long range plans the disciples could easily have ignored the fact that some were in need. Even today Christians misunderstand “the poor you will always have with you” (Mark 14:7) as permission to ignore the cry of the poor. They didn’t do that: they ensured that all would be cared for, regardless of situation or previous decisions. They set a path for what we see today as Catholic Charities, St. Vincent de Paul and our teaching on preferential option for the poor.

As I said we’ll be spending a great deal of time this season walking with the earliest Christians in the Acts of the Apostles. We can take for granted the choices they made as we read about them every year. But let’s take some time to recognize that we are who we are because they listened to the Resurrected Jesus, the Holy Spirit and each other. They likely had no idea we’d still be reading about them all these centuries later but I hope they’d be impressed with what we’ve done with their leadership.

That’s how we answer “what now.”